October 28 is a National holiday in Greece marking ΟΧΙ (No) Day – the refusal of Greece
in 1940 to accept the Italian ultimatum advanced by Mussolini, to allow
the Italian fascist troops to enter the country. Not only did Greek
forces stop the Italian invasion, but actually forced Mussolini’s troops
back into Albania. Every year it is celebrated as a day of “national
pride”. Not so this year! The masses took over the celebrations and used
them to express their anger at the Greek ruling class. Here we publish a
report from Athens written on the day of the “celebrations”
October 28 is a National holiday in Greece marking ΟΧΙ (No) Day – the refusal of Greece
in 1940 to accept the Italian ultimatum advanced by Mussolini, to allow
the Italian fascist troops to enter the country. Not only did Greek
forces stop the Italian invasion, but actually forced Mussolini’s troops
back into Albania. Every year it is celebrated as a day of “national
pride”. Not so this year! The masses took over the celebrations and used
them to express their anger at the Greek ruling class. Here we publish a
report from Athens written on the day of the “celebrations”.
Syriza bannerToday
(October 28, 2011) there was an unprecedented phenomenon in Greece. In
normal, socially peaceful periods, national anniversaries offer the
ruling class a good opportunity to create a climate of “national unity”
in order to distract the working masses away from the class-exploitative
reality of this society. High-ranking state officials, seated on
special platforms that are above the “common people” enjoy their
“official” status and give banal speeches alongside the parade,
symbolising the allegiance to power. But today, there was nothing of the
typical national anniversary.
In most cities from Crete to Evros, the “ritual” changed
dramatically. Instead of peaceful home-owners filled with national
pride, we saw ordinary people of all ages expressing their revolutionary
anger against the political crooks who legislate on the destruction of
their living standards. Instead of proud “officials” greeting the
crowds, we saw very little people, uncomfortable in their suits, being
whisked away by their bodyguards and giving up their seats in the stands
to angry pensioners, laid-off workers and housewives. Instead of “proud
youth” parading in honour of the power of the state, we saw students
turning their faces away for the platforms or giving the Greek
five-finger gesture to the “officials”, revealing the innate aversion
they feel for them.
This spontaneous wave of harassment of ministers and MPs of both
PASOK and New Democracy in the parades was repeated throughout the
country. There were massive and dynamic protests in Patras, Volos,
Rhodes, Trikala, Corfu, Veria, Kalamata, Iraklion, Kozani, Tripoli,
Nafplio, Pyrgos, Agios Nikolaos, Rethymno, Serres, Larissa, Piraeus, Athens and, in particular, Thessaloniki. (see Euronews)
In Athens, thousands of demonstrators were violently prevented by the
police from approaching the venue of the parade, while many students
marched with black armbands. But where the protests reached their
highest point was in the city of Thessaloniki. Thirty thousand
Thessalonikians, spontaneously marched in a protest that drove away the
government and state officials (among them the President of Greece
himself), took over the podium and imposed for the first time in history
the cancellation of a military parade in the city, surrounding the
military contingent and taking control of the ceremony, wiping out any
traces of the ruling class in the ceremony by doing so!
Commentators in the bourgeois media and the apologists of the
government since the early morning mounted a provocative and
hypocritical campaign of defamation of the spontaneous expression of
popular anger, denouncing it as an act of disrespect towards the nation
and its institutions, particularly complaining about the expulsion of
the President of Greece from the parade in Thessaloniki, as a gesture of
“attack against democracy”. For these gentlemen in smart suits and ties
and ladies in expensive dresses, “respect for democracy” means the
quiet subjugation of the masses to the appetites of a handful of foreign
and local usurers and respect for their political representatives, who
enjoy privileges and power while the people become poorer.
The angry masses spontaneously expelled the politicians from the
parades and did not hesitate to call them “traitors”. The fact that this
characterisation of “traitor” [in the nationalist sense of the word] is
often used by many ultra-patriotic bourgeois and petty demagogues, from
the far right and LAOS to the fringes of the Left, to describe as
“nationalist” the class nature of the attacks on workers, should not
distract us from its real meaning. This term is perfectly justified when
used by ordinary people. Indeed, the bourgeois politicians have made a
profession of betraying the interests of working people, with all its
accessories such as civil fraud and shameless lies.
What we saw taking place in today’s celebrations of October 28th
was not “lawlessness” or chaos, as the screaming apologists of the
establishment suggest. It marks the unfolding of a progressive process;
the spontaneous, sudden and massive vote of no-confidence of the masses
in the political crooks who have ruled over them for decades. This
process in fact lays the foundation for the building of a revolutionary
consciousness.
So what eloquently reflects today’s historic events is the rapid
transformation of the widespread anger of the people into a
revolutionary mood, which has defiled the “sacred” figures of the
bourgeois regime and which has paralysed Greek capitalism and its state
apparatus through a series of general and sectoral long-lasting strikes,
the occupation ministries and key government buildings and the
transformation of the official state ceremonies into moments of class
protest.
The complaints of “reputable” commentators on the evening news about
the “slide of the country into chaos”, “unsafe streets” and even the
“opening of the gates of hell”, all express the terror of the ruling
class in the face of the revolutionary implications that flow from the
crisis of their system. This fear of the ruling class as it feels
threatened by the revolutionary mood that has developed within the
working people and youth, is confirmed by all the reports of spontaneous
outbursts against this popular anger towards a wide range of council
leaders and apologists of capitalism, by television commentators, the
government, local mayors and prefects, the ND, LAOS, the "Public
Alliance" (the party of Dora Bakoyianni) and – oh, what a surprise – the
supposed left leadership of the “Democratic Left” (the recent
right-wing split from the Synaspismos).
In a state of delirium produced by their terror, the bourgeoisie once
again is looking for “provocateurs” within the ranks of the Left and
especially SYRIZA [the electoral front based on the Synaspismos]. The
truth is that the leaders of the Left, are mere observers of this
growing revolutionary mood of the masses. Instead of trying to influence
and direct the struggle politically in the direction of socialism, they
simply limit themselves to flattering the masses in a cowardly manner,
because they realise that sooner or later they can be pushed violently
to power. This is proof of the fact that the left leaders are not moving
towards the limits of an alleged extremism, as they are accused of
doing by the ruling class, but rather they are moving in the opposite
direction, using empty anti-neoliberal rhetoric with talk of some vague
roads to “socialism” in some distant indeterminate future. They do not
have a visible power solution for the masses and do not wish to develop a
programme of revolutionary struggle capable of giving vent to the
militant mood of millions of people determined to fight.
But is it really time for a revolution, the sceptics will ask. The
Marxists respond with a clear and loud YES! The broad masses of the
people are clearly showing that they want to fight. The 15 successive
general strikes of the last eighteen months, the huge wave of militant
labour rallies – especially the most recent of 19-20 October, the scores
of other militant long drawn out strikes and occupations in the public
sector, combined with the increasing militant mood of the private sector
workers, the dynamic youth movement, the mass movement in the squares,
the emergence of popular assemblies in dozens of neighbourhoods, and
today, with this miraculous transformation of military marches into
protest demonstrations all reveal an undeniable truth; the situation is
becoming revolutionary.
But the unborn revolution in order to be victorious, rather than
political tail-ending and dismayed flatterers, requires a revolutionary
leadership that can offer a socialist programme and an immediate
prospect of power. Thus the struggle for the creation of such a
leadership is the duty of every left fighter today and especially the
militants who belong to the Left parties, in which increasingly
rebellious proletarians and many young people are beginning now to place
their hopes, namely the Communist Party and Synaspismos with its allies
in SYRIZA. Only a popular and united Left around the programme of
socialism can give expression to the impetuous revolutionary mood of the
people that is paralysing the bourgeois regime, has profaned the
rituals of the state and which has spread terror in the ruling class.
Source: Μαρξιστική Φωνή (Greece)
